UK Goldman Sachs 'escapes paying £10million bill in sweetheart deal with the taxman' By Kirsty Walker / ICH

Goldman Sachs 'escapes paying £10million bill in sweetheart deal with the taxman'

By Kirsty Walker
Last updated at 7:59 AM on 8th November 2011

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'Most dined' civil servant: Dave Hartnett from the HMRC has been criticised for his close relationships with big businesses

The country's top tax official signed off a deal which let banking giant Goldman Sachs off a £10million tax bill without consulting a single lawyer, it emerged yesterday.
Dave Hartnett was accused of being 'cavalier' with taxpayers money after he admitted to MPs that he had not sought legal advice before agreeing to the controversial 'sweetheart' deal.
Mr Hartnett has faced calls to resign after it leaked documents showed that that he had personally agreed to waive up to £10million of interest on a £30million bill from a failed tax avoidance scheme on bankers' bonuses.
Mr Hartnett – previously described as Britain's most 'wined and dined' civil servant was also grilled by MPs over his 107 breakfasts, lunches and dinners that he attended over three years with big companies and accountancy firms.
MPs on the powerful Public Administration Committee expressed fury over the 'evasion' of senior tax officials during a tense and bad-tempered hearing in Parliament yesterday.
The committee's chairman Margaret Hodge said: 'The whole saga it seems to me this is the biggest ad for Goldman Sachs because they toughed it out and got off interest. That's what it feels like to me.
'The perception is such there has been huge reputational damage to HMRC. If I was sitting at Goldman Sachs, I would be rubbing my hands because they'd think we beat 'em to it and got off the tax bill.'

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She later added: 'I am shocked by the cavalier approach to what is millions of pounds. This will stick in the gullet for ordinary taxpayers.'
Tory MP Stephen Barclay claimed that phone giant Vodafone was also potentially let off a tax bill worth as much as £8billion last year - £2billion more than has previously been estimated - following a behind-the-scenes deal with officials.
Mr Barclay said: 'The Exchequer may have lost about £8billion in tax which makes Goldman look paltry in comparison. We are talking about potentially £8billion of tax lost.

Demanding answers: UK Uncut and Occupy London activists outside the HM Revenue & Customs offices last month

Clock ticking: Protesters call for Mr Hartnett to resign over his involvement in Goldman's alleged tax avoidance

'We're looking at a company that was given five years to pay even though it was sitting on a cash pile.'
The HMRC has admitted to errors over governance procedures and to failing to collect the £10million interest - in the mistaken belief there was a 'legal impediment' to doing so.
Mr Hartnett revealed that an HM Revenue & Customs official lost their bonus following the £10million blunder. He risked angering MPs by saying: 'The error was taken into account on someone's annual appraisal.'
The controversy has plunged HMRC into turmoil and has led to an overhaul of how the taxman deals with rows over tax avoidance by big business.
In a humiliating move, Britain's most senior civil servant Sir Gus O'Donnell told the committee that new tax commissioners would oversee checks on negotations with large companies over their tax bills.

Money talks: MPs are furious at how HM Revenue & Customs resolves disputes over large sums with powerful organisations

In future, any deal would have to be endorsed by the commissioners rather than those who negotiate the deals.
While 21 other large investment banks settled with HMRC in 2005 over their use of offshore structures known as 'employee benefit trusts' to avoid National Insurance contributions on bankers' bonuses, Goldman continued to litigate the case for five years before also opting to settle.
Mr Hartnett has been accused of misleading MPs by previously saying he did not deal with Goldman's tax affairs. He told MPs he had known nothing about the dispute when he attended a dinner at the bank 18 months earlier.

'Dangerous': Labour MP Margaret Hodge has been highly critical of Mr Hartnett for mixing business with pleasure

In a dramatic twist to the Committee, MPs earlier forced the HMRC's top lawyer to testify on oath after growing frustrated at his failure to answer their questions.
General counsel and solicitor Anthony Inglese was repeatedly rebuked for refusing to answer questions over the controversial tax deal.
Mrs Hodge told him: 'We are taking a very unusual step this afternoon but I am going to ask you, with the power that we have, that from here onwards that we are going to examine you on oath.'
As the committee Clerk brought him a Bible, Mr Inglese said: 'Can I just have a minute's time out?'
But senior Tory member Richard Bacon broke in: 'No. I do not see why you should have a minute's time out at all. This committee has the powers to make witnesses give evidence under oath and we are doing so.
'The reason is because actually we have not been able to get answers otherwise.'
Mrs Hodge told him afterwards: 'I am no lawyer, but clearly having taken the oath you will not want to give answers that are incorrect or you will find yourself with an accusation of having committed perjury.'
Mr Inglese repeatedly refused to comment on the nature of the controversial deals with big business claiming he was prevent by 'legal privilege'.
It is very rare for select committees to exercise their power to take evidence under oath. One of the last occasions was in 1997 when former Tory MP Neil Hamilton appeared before the Commons Standards & Privileges Committee.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2058557/Goldman-Sachs-escapes-paying-10m-sweetheart-deal-taxman.html#ixzz1dS94qU1U

Irreversible Climate Change Looms Within Five Years by / Environment News Service / ICH

Published on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 by Environment News Service

Irreversible Climate Change Looms Within Five Years

LONDON - Unless there is a "bold change of policy direction," the world will lock itself into an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system, the International Energy Agency warned at the launch of its 2011 World Energy Outlook today in London.
Coal-fired power generating station in Shanxi, China. (Photo courtesy Skoda Export) The report says there is still time to act, but despite steps in the right direction the door of opportunity is closing.
The agency's warning comes at a critical time in international climate change negotiations, as governments prepare for the annual UN climate summit in Durban, South Africa, from November 28.
"If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door will be closed forever," IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol warned today.
"Growth, prosperity and rising population will inevitably push up energy needs over the coming decades. But we cannot continue to rely on insecure and environmentally unsustainable uses of energy," said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.
"Governments need to introduce stronger measures to drive investment in efficient and low-carbon technologies," she said.
"The Fukushima nuclear accident, the turmoil in parts of the Middle East and North Africa and a sharp rebound in energy demand in 2010 which pushed CO2 emissions to a record high, highlight the urgency and the scale of the challenge," van der Hoeven said.
Some key trends are pointing in worrying directions, the agency told reporters today. CO2 emissions have rebounded to a record high, the energy efficiency of global economy worsened for second straight year and spending on oil imports is near record highs.
In the World Energy Outlook's central New Policies Scenario, which assumes that recent government commitments are implemented in a cautious manner, primary energy demand increases by one-third between 2010 and 2035, with 90 percent of the growth in non-OECD economies.
In the New Policies Scenario, cumulative carbon dioxide emissions over the next 25 years amount to three-quarters of the total from the past 110 years, leading to a long-term average temperature rise of 3.5 degrees C.
"Were the new policies not implemented, we are on an even more dangerous track, to an increase of six degrees C.
The IEA projects that China will consolidate its position as the world's largest energy consumer. It consumes nearly 70 percent more energy than the United States by 2035, even though, by then, per capita demand in China is still less than half the level in the United States.
The share of fossil fuels in global primary energy consumption falls from around 81 percent today to 75 percent in 2035.
Renewables increase from 13 percent of the mix today to 18 percent in 2035; the growth in renewables is underpinned by subsidies that rise from $64 billion in 2010 to $250 billion in 2035, support that in some cases cannot be taken for granted in this age of fiscal austerity.
By contrast, subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to $409 billion in 2010.
"As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the "lock-in" of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals," said Birol.
The World Energy Outlook also presents a 450 Scenario, which traces an energy path consistent with meeting the globally agreed goal of limiting the temperature rise to two degrees Celsuis above pre-industrial levels.
Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permitted to 2035 in the 450 Scenario are already locked in by existing capital stock, including power stations, buildings and factories, the report finds.
Without further action by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure then in place would generate all the CO2 emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035.
"Delaying action is a false economy," Birol warned, saying that for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2011

Report: Natural Gas Industry Spent Millions to Avoid Fracking Regulations / CommonDreams.org

Published on Thursday, November 10, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Report: Natural Gas Industry Spent Millions to Avoid Fracking Regulations

According to a new report by the nonpartison group Common Cause, the natural gas industry has pumped millions into Congress to avoid regulation of hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking."According to a new report by the nonpartison group Common Cause, the natural gas industry has pumped millions into Congress to avoid regulation of hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking." (photo: Kara Newhouse)
Fracking is a controversial method of obtaining natural gas involving injecting a mix of sand, chemicals, and water into a well at high pressure. Questions have been raised about the possibility of polluting groundwater near fracking sites, and was documented in a 1987 EPA study.
The new report details that $747 million has been spent during a successful 10-year campaign. “Players in this industry have pumped cash into Congress in the same way they pump toxic chemicals into underground rock formations to free trapped gas,” said Common Cause President Bob Edgar.
Among the report's key findings:

• From 2001 through June 2011, companies now engaged in fracking contributed $20.5 million to current members of Congress. Industry giving more than tripled from the 2001-02 election cycle, when $2 million was contributed, to the 2009-10 election cycle, when $6.8 million was contributed. These same companies spent $726 million on lobbying at the federal level from 2001 through September, 2011.
  
• Contributions heavily favored current members of Congress who voted for the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Current members who voted for the bill received an average of $73,433, while those who voted against the bill received an average of $10,894.
  
• The natural gas industry’s fight against regulation has gotten important help at the state level from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). As documented in an August 2011 Common Cause report, ALEC generates and lobbies for hundreds of model bills every year despite its status as a tax-exempt 501 (c)(3) organization. Prominent financial backers of ALEC’s activities include the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, and Koch Industries, owner of the largest network of natural gas- transmitting pipelines in the country.

“Thanks to the Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision, the natural gas industry will be free to spend whatever it likes next year to elect a Congress that will do its bidding,” Edgar said. “The industry’s political investments already have largely freed it from government oversight. Controlling the flow of that money and other corporate spending on our elections is critical to protecting our environment for this and future generations.”

Groups Call on Senate to Prevent Another Toxic Coal Ash Spill TV ads in Wisc., Mich. and Va. highlight threat of coal ash after Great Lakes spill / Earthjustice/ Common Dreams

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 8, 2011 10:22 AM

CONTACT: Earthjustice Jared Saylor, Earthjustice (202) 667-4500 ext. 213 Maggie Kao, Sierra Club (202) 675-2384

Groups Call on Senate to Prevent Another Toxic Coal Ash Spill

TV ads in Wisc., Mich. and Va. highlight threat of coal ash after Great Lakes spill

WASHINGTON - November 8 -

Earthjustice and Sierra Club launched a television ad campaign in three states urging Senators to reject legislation that prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating toxic coal ash. The ads are launching on the heels of a toxic coal ash spill into Lake Michigan, and are airing in Wisc., Mich. and Va. All three states have been plagued by toxic coal ash contamination onto their land and into drinking water sources. The bill, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, is before the Senate now.

The 30-second spots take a humorous look at a very serious problem. Coal ash contains dangerous pollutants such as lead, arsenic, mercury, hexavalent chromium, selenium and much more. Though the EPA reports that drinking water contaminated with arsenic from a coal ash site increases cancer risk to 1 in 50 – 2,000 times greater than acceptable risk levels – there are still no federally enforceable standards to protect nearby communities from this toxic menace.

View the Wisconsin ad here: http://youtu.be/d3M3PNJayDk

View the Michigan ad here: http://youtu.be/YGCBXsftPbI

View the Virginia ad here: http://youtu.be/bUhMlUlb0j0

“A vote against this dangerous Senate legislation is a vote to protect public health and our environment,” said Martin Hayden, vice president of policy and legislation for Earthjustice. “This bill creates fewer safeguards to protect people from toxic coal ash than currently exist for a banana peel in the town dump. It passes on tackling the national problem of coal ash contamination, thus threatening human lives, irreparably harming our drinking water and ensuring that future generations have an even larger mess to clean up. The only right vote is one that would kill this legislation and stop it from passage. We are calling on our senators to vote for the people, not for the polluting industries. We do not need another disaster to show us the very real threat of coal ash.”

“This spill in the Great Lakes is a tragic reminder of why the status quo is not good enough,” said Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign director. “As long as politicians interfere, spills like this are going to happen, communities across the country are at risk. Congress needs to back off and allow the EPA to finalize strong protections and the Senate should stop their work to block the EPA from protecting Americans from toxic coal ash.”

###

Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.

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Obama's Offshore Oil Plan a Disaster for Wildlife, Climate / Common Dreams.org

Published on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Obama's Offshore Oil Plan a Disaster for Wildlife, Climate

Statement from Center for Biological Diversity

WASHINGTON— The Obama administration announced plans today to expand offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and offer additional lease sales in the sensitive waters off Alaska. Ramping up offshore drilling raises the risk of disastrous spills, puts wildlife in harm’s way and deepens U.S. dependence on the fossil fuels driving the global climate crisis.
“Last year’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was supposed to be a wake-up call about the dangers of offshore drilling, but it looks like President Obama hit the snooze button and slept right through it,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We just can’t keep expanding offshore drilling and not expect to have more disastrous spills.”
The five-year plan announced today will set the stage for 15 lease sales in six offshore areas, including the Arctic’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas and portions of the Gulf of Mexico near areas where development has so far been off-limits.
The plan to lease more parts of the Gulf of Mexico for drilling follows a March 2011 report by the Department of the Interior that found most existing leases are inactive. The report showed that 70 percent of existing federal oil and gas offshore lease acres are inactive, with no production, exploration or development.
“Gulf of Mexico communities are still reeling from the impacts of last year’s oil spill, and now the president wants to put those same communities at risk again,” said Sakashita. “The administration’s claiming significant steps have been taken to make drilling safer, but in fact there’s been no fundamental reform that can keep the Gulf of Mexico or the Arctic safe from the next spill catastrophe.”
The plan proposes to sell leases in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas, home to all of America’s polar bears. A U.S. Geological Survey report concluded that key scientific information is lacking for the development of oil and gas in Arctic offshore waters; effective spill cleanup in this remote area is nonexistent. The Coast Guard’s top official, Commandant Robert Papp, told Congress that the federal government currently has “zero” spill response capability in the Arctic.
“Polar bears are already teetering at the brink of extinction. Policies that worsen climate change and raise the risk of disastrous oil spills in their habitat will push them over the edge,” said Sakashita.

Obama Delays Keystone Pipeline at Least 12 Months / Daniel Stone / The Daily Beast

Obama Delays Keystone Pipeline at Least 12 Months

Nov 10, 2011 2:08 PM EST

Stuck between two unpopular options on a controversial oil pipeline, President Obama finds an escape hatch. Daniel Stone reports.

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Stumped for weeks about how to handle the economic and environmental sensitivities of a controversial oil pipeline, President Obama finally arrived at a solution to keep the lucrative process in motion and his base appeased.

After large protests on Sunday at the White House demanding Obama call off the project, White House and Capitol Hill officials confirmed Thursday that the government would delay the process. U.S. regulators with the State Department and other federal agencies plan to tell TransCanada, the company behind the 1,700-mile pipeline, to make the project more environmentally friendly by changing its route before it can receive a clear green light from Washington. Doing so allows the administration to delay a final approval for as much as a year, staving off a lose-lose decision certain to be politically unpopular.

"I welcome today's announcement that the State Department has decided to delay a decision on this project in order to further review its potential impacts,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a statement, confirming an earlier report that the White House had decided to delay making a final determination. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was expected to speak about the decision later Thursday.

The complex solution had stemmed from two unpalatable options. Obama could have approved the construction of the pipeline—an economic boon and a substantial move toward energy security and stability. Or he could have called off the project entirely to appease the demands of environmentalists, incensed that the U.S. would encourage even more large-scale fossil-fuel production and the spewing of more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

“There’s really no reason why that pipeline should not be approved,” said Jack Gerard, president of API, said in response to the raucous White House protests. API and other energy groups estimated that the project would create 1 million new jobs in the next seven years and bring in $127 billion in revenue without raising any taxes. Other proponents noted that were the U.S. to withdraw, the Canadians would still produce the oil and just sell it to Asian countries, including China, which has laxer environmental regulations, resulting in a situation that could be even worse for the planet.

Environmentalists pointed out that the jobs number had been wildly inflated and have even alleged corruption in how the State Department handled the pipeline’s initial application. Responding to complaints, the inspector general at the department recommended that the decision—initially expected at the end of 2011—be delayed until a full investigation could be completed.

Doing so allows the administration to delay a final approval for as much as a year, staving off a lose-lose decision certain to be politically unpopular.

The environmental community had also appealed to Obama on political grounds, applying pressure on a 2008 campaign promise he made to reduce fossil fuels and expand renewable energy. "If the U.S. government goes ahead and makes it easier to develop [the pipeline], then there is no credible way to insist that they're working hard on climate change," Bill McKibben, the lead protester and organizer, said at Sunday’s protest. The demonstrations were designed to threaten a lack of support for Obama's reelection bid next year.

On the defensive, the White House had maintained that Obama is focused on jobs and has believed there’s a way to build the pipeline and scrupulously protect the environment at the same time. “He doesn’t see it as an either/or,” one official, speaking under the usual rules of anonymity, told The Daily Beast.

Obama even personally tried to stake the middle ground. "We need to encourage domestic oil and natural-gas production, and we need to make sure that we have energy security and aren’t just relying on Middle East sources," he told an interviewer in Omaha last week. "But there’s a way of doing that and still making sure that the health and safety of the American people and folks in Nebraska are protected, and that’s how I’ll be measuring these recommendations when they come to me."

The administration is keen to point out Obama’s other environmental accomplishments, which haven’t gotten the attention the president’s aides would like. The Recovery Act funded considerable leaps in renewable energy and efficiency research. A mandate on fuel standards will nearly double mileage efficiency by 2025, in turn reducing fossil-fuel consumption. And the percentage of oil the U.S. imports has dropped sharply—from about 60 percent in 2005 to 48 percent now—mostly because of the recession, but also because of expanded exploration and production in places like the Gulf.

The extension of the review is expected to take 12 to 18 months. If it stays on schedule, Obama will make a final decision, conveniently, just weeks after the 2012 election.

Keystone XL splits unions and Occupy Wall Street Occupy protesters in New York disavow a labor-backed campaign in support of the tar sands pipeline VIDEO By Justin Elliott / Salon

Monday, Nov 7, 2011 10:30 AM 22:46:11 PST

Keystone XL splits unions and Occupy Wall Street

Occupy protesters in New York disavow a labor-backed campaign in support of the tar sands pipeline VIDEO

By Justin Elliott

Topics:Occupy Wall Street, Keystone XL pipeline, U.S. Economy, The Labor Movement

Occupy Wall Street is getting another lesson in the hazards of running an open-source movement.
Late last week, an association of construction unions partnered with the oil and gas industry to launch a campaign that uses the rhetoric of Occupy and the 99 percent to push for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. That project, of course, is the subject of intense opposition by environmentalists who argue that it would be a disaster for climate change; thousands of protesters formed a human chain around the White House over the weekend to urge Obama to reject the pipeline proposal.
Many within the Occupy movement also oppose the Keystone project and are now taking steps to distance themselves from the new labor-backed pro-Keystone campaign.
The new campaign, funded by America’s Building Trades Unions and the Oil & Natural Gas Industry Labor-Management Committee, launched late last week with ads in Capitol Hill newspapers, radio ads in markets along the proposed pipeline route, and a website, JobsForThe99.com. It was first reported by FireDogLake.

The campaign attacks celebrities who have opposed Keystone — including Daryl Hannah and Danny Glover — as elitists destroying desperately needed middle-class jobs with their misguided environmental activism.
“Hollywood’s elite 1% should stop flying to DC and speaking out against jobs that help the other 99% of America!” the campaign declares.
Building Trades Unions spokesman Tom Owens declined to specify how much money is being spent on the ads beyond that it’s “a significant investment on our part.” Some of that money is presumably also coming from the oil industry, which is well represented in the Alexandria, Virginia-based Oil & Natural Gas Industry Labor-Management Committee.
Here’s the ad that ran in Roll Call contrasting actress Daryl Hannah with construction worker Darrell Turner:
Building unions pro-Keystone ad
In response, horrified Occupy Wall Street protesters on Sunday approved a statement of disavowal at the general assembly in Zuccotti Park, the main governing body of Occupy in New York.
“The leadership of the unions behind this campaign have made a public alliance with the oil industry and Tea Party funders,” the statement declares. “Big Oil and Tea Party billionaires are part of the 1% . The reference to the 99% is opportunistic and misleading. … We must dissociate from this attempt at co-optation by the 1% to preserve our movement as the 99%, and as definitive precedent to dissuade future attempts of co-optation.”
Tim Woodcock, a co-founder of Occupy Wall Street’s environmental solidarity working group, says he introduced the statement after hearing from both environmental activists outside Occupy as well as an official at a union who opposes the Keystone pipeline. “In the Occupy framework, it’s unacceptable for an outside entity to assume solidarity with the 99 percent when they’re not there,” Woodcock says.
Indeed, Keystone has split the labor movement. The AFL-CIO for example — of which the Building Trades Unions are a part — is declining to take a position on Keystone. An AFL-CIO spokesman declined to comment for this story. And other unions within the AFL-CIO, the Transport Workers Union and the Amalgamated Transit Union, are on the record opposing Keystone for environmental and public safety reasons.
At the heart of the split is the fiercely debated question of whether the Keystone pipeline, which would snake from Canada’s tar sands through the American Midwest to the Gulf Coast, would create jobs.
“The only study not paid for by TransCanada — done indeed by a big labor think tank — made it clear this would kill as many jobs as it created. And even those jobs would be very temporary — that’s why you build a pipeline so no one ever has to work again to get the oil out,” said anti-Keystone organizer Bill McKibben in an email. TransCanada is the oil company behind the pipeline project.
The Washington Post on Sunday weighed the arguments on both sides:

A TransCanada statement Sept. 30 said the project would be “stimulating over 14,400 person years of employment” in Oklahoma alone. It cited a study by Ray Perryman, a Texas-based consultant to TransCanada, saying the pipeline would create “250,000 permanent jobs for U.S. workers.”
But Perryman was including a vast number of jobs far removed from the industry. Using that technique in a report on the impact of wind farms, Perryman counted jobs for dancers, choreographers and speech therapists.
…
Meanwhile, the Cornell Global Labor Institute issued a study suggesting that any jobs stemming from the pipeline’s construction could be outweighed by environmental damage it caused, along with a possible rise in Midwest gasoline prices because a new pipeline would divert that region’s current oversupply of oil to the Gulf Coast.

That Cornell study is here, and the TransCanada-backed study is here.
It’s also worth noting that oil companies are playing a significant role in the JobsForThe99 pro-Keystone campaign. One of the co-sponsors of the campaign, the Oil & Natural Gas Industry Labor-Management Committee, counts among its leadership the president of ExxonMobil and the president of the American Petroleum Institute, which is the industry’s trade association. The executive director of the committee is Timothy Dickson, principal of the Alexandria-based Groundswell Communications, which serves as the headquarters for the committee.
Dickson has worked for state and national Democratic party outfits, corporate interests like the Chamber of Commerce and PhRMA, and unions like the Teamsters.
“The partnership between America’s Building Trades Unions and the [oil] industry focuses almost singularly on jobs,” he says of the Oil & Natural Gas Industry Labor-Management Committee, which was created two years ago.
The groups behind the JobsForThe99 website did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Occupy Wall Street’s disavowal of the campaign.

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Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott